Beloved Child: A Dakota Way of Life

Gabrielle Tateyuskanskan

The horses were eager to be moving, stamping their feet as a cloud of warm breath rose above horse and rider. On this early December morning, just a few days before Christmas, about thirty riders were preparing to leave the Lower Sioux Reservation on a four-day ride along the Minnesota River to Mankato. They had begun several days earlier with a ceremony at the Crow Creek Reservation, and now the riders would continue following snow-covered country roads, absorbing the deep stillness of the frozen Minnesota River. Arvol Looking Horse, the keeper of the White Buffalo Calf Woman pipe, was riding with them for the last four days of this annual journey. As a chill wind moved through the eagle staffs at the front of the line, the Ride proceeded like an extended ceremony, bringing together prayer, healing relationships, and time spent in the breathtaking beauty of the Dakota homeland. On the morning of December 26, weary horses would carry their riders into Reconciliation Park, where Dakota people and supporters gather each year to honor the thirty-eight men who were hanged in 1862. The Dakota 38 Memorial Ride was inspired by a recurring dream that came in 2005 to Jim Miller, a Lakota spiritual leader. Miller dreamed that he traveled 330 miles on horseback, arriving at a river in Mankato where he saw thirty-eight of his own ancestors hanged. As the staff carrier for the first four years of the ride, Miller retraced the route of his dream on horseback as a way of bringing healing and reconciliation. Through this event, Miller has given Dakota people a way to honor both 91 Gabrielle Tateyuskanskan 04_Layout 1 6/6/2011 10:19 Page 91 92 Beloved Child this history and their long cultural relationship with horses and the Minnesota River Valley. For the past four years, artist and poet Gabrielle Tateyuskanskan, an enrolled member of the Sisseton-Wahpeton Oyate on the Lake Traverse Reservation, has been part of this Ride with her partner, J. R. Rondell, also Sisseton-Wahpeton Oyate; Gaby’s two children, Vivienne and Hunter; and her mother, Yvonne Wynde. They ride their own horses, transporting them from their land at the Old Agency to the Lower Sioux Reservation. For Gaby, who grew up traveling the roads along the Minnesota River Valley with her grandmother, the Ride means returning to a landscape she loves and sharing a deeply spiritual event with her family. The Ride also allows Gaby to spend time with their horses, a relationship that has both inspired and supported her throughout her life. Gaby said, “Horses are sacred animals that have sustained the people through these tough periods. Riding horses in this beautiful scenery in the winter strengthens something in my spirit.” Dakota people have long relied on horses for hunting, moving camp, and warfare. In the late eighteenth century , horses were rounded up and slaughtered by the government as a way of preventing Native people from leaving their reservations. Events like the Dakota 38 Ride help reestablish the strong relationship between Dakota people and horses, whom they called s’unkawakan, or sacred dog, based in mutual dependence and affection. While Gaby credits both her grandmother and her mother for helping her become an artist, the early days she spent as a child helping her grandmother garden developed her imagination. At the Old Agency in Sisseton, Gaby’s grandmother Vivian Barse Wynde rose early each morning as the birds were just beginning to sing, preferring to work while the sun was still cool. She made cowboy coffee in a chipped enamel pot that sat on a grill over her cooking fire, ready for friends who stopped by to visit and tell stories. Gaby and her cousins learned how to plant seeds that had been saved from the previous harvest, how to weed, when to pick the ripe vegetables. Seeds were saved for no more than two years. Vivian grew sweet corn for drying and kept a separate garden on her land at Enemy 04_Layout 1 6/6/2011 10:19 Page 92 Gabrielle Tateyuskanskan 93 Swim, where she could raise hominy corn without worrying about crosspollination . She also showed her grandchildren how to plant a traditional Three Sisters garden. “She would say, Get a mound of earth, plant six corn kernels in the middle, then plant whatever beans you wanted around the outside, and the squash in the middle sections,” Gaby...